


Forged of Dragonfire

by deathwailart



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Durin Family Angst, F/M, First Kiss, Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-30
Updated: 2014-05-30
Packaged: 2018-01-27 14:52:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1714562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once The Lonely Mountain was piloted by Thorin, Frerin and Dis with other Jaegers spread far and wide.  But then Smaug came and Frerin was gone leavin Dis to run the Shatterdome and Thorin to train her sons, the would-be next generation pilots.  Enter Tauriel, former pilot of Elin Hathol*, who sees that they cannot hide behind walls and comes to a Shatterdome in need of a third pilot.</p>
<p>Written for a prompt: Pacific Rim + Fili, Kili and Tauriel as Jaeger pilots</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forged of Dragonfire

It should have been scrapped, Dís knows this, knows better than to keep an old ghost lying around but she can't help it, it's the Jaeger her family poured resources into like all the rest, it's a Jaeger she lived and breathed in, her mind flowing around Thorin and Frerin's as though they were her own. But she looks up at the Lonely Mountain and rests her palm against cool metal and remembers. Remembers Frerin's laugh and Thorin spinning her faster and faster, remembers grandfather and father before the Kaiju Blue and the war changed them. Remembers seeing herself with the man she loved and her swollen belly. Her boys who grew up without a father for the most, without a grandfather, a great-grandfather.  
  
Without an uncle.  
  
She clenches her fist hard enough that her nails score her palm, swallows her coffee and strides off to her office and the inevitable stack of paperwork awaiting her, Balin no doubt ready to give her a briefing and let her know about Thorin. He's likely with Dwalin, helping train recruits and pilots down in the training rooms, her own two sons among them, Fíli and Kíli who are better than she was at their age. But she didn't grow up to be a pilot. She didn't grow up having the Kaiju drills. They still used old weapons then and she wasn't a child – no one is really a child now she thinks sadly – when she had to learn. They move like soldiers and they move the way she and her brothers did once, when it was only them, an invisible cord stretched and wrapped around them that let them so far only to gently guide them back, no secrets ( _Frerin sitting up on the roof looking to the stars and writing until his wrists ached, Thorin trying to step into shoes too big, too young, Dís with a son of five and life flickering beneath her palm, so so alone again_ ) and no shame. Now Thorin has three smiles: grim even when he tries not to be with shadows in his eyes, a smile she cannot name that belongs only to her and to her sons and then another one that has a glint of madness and unsettles her stomach with the deafening horn of the Lonely Mountain blaring as if to signal battle. Her boys stopped moving like boys long ago, so close they might as well be twins, moving in sync with a swagger that propels them forward, always in motion. Fíli, older and more sure and his shoulders are not broad enough yet to carry the weight he thinks he must shoulder and Kíli quick and flighty but who looks up with her eyes, Frerin's eyes, Thorin's eyes and wonders if he is enough.  
  
She did not raise sons, she raised soldiers. She carried them in the Drift with her and one day she can give them more than her family gave her in the end; she will give them so much more than nearly ruining themselves with their mines and workers and companies, her closest relationship and all the cousins and might as well be family who forged the first Jaegers. Others took over, men closer to the government – and now they are abandoned, she seethes and in the Shatterdome they swear the Lonely Mountain groans with her, that there's some deeper connection the Durin's all share with that great hulking Mark I lump – who made them swift and agile, strong still but elegant.  
  
She'll take a mountain over anything. A mountain grows and grows, a mountain is old and ageless, mountains cannot be felled so easily.  
  
( _But always she remembers Smaug. Remembers Thorin howling and her voice screaming as Frerin was ripped from them, his voice lost in the wind as that great ugly worm sank back into the Breach, the Lonely Mountain cleaved in two with that gaping terrible hole between her and her remaining brother. She remembers the burn of her drive suit, the taste of blood in her mouth and Frerin's fear coursing through her._ )  
  
Today she shakes herself from her waking dreams, thinks of the reports and phone calls she has to handle, of Balin and his steady surety with the worry he can never quite disguise and the steady clack-clack-clack of sticks, her sons moving as one the way she and her brothers did. The Breach has been too quiet, the Jaeger program is losing funding in favour of walls and she knows, oh she knows who pushes for these walls, the way Thorin growls low in his throat whenever the subject comes up, his words hard and angry, grating like stone on stone as his eyes shine fever bright but this Shatterdome will remain as it ever has.

* * *

  
  
Tauriel is new to this Shatterdome having left with angry words but not a backward glance from the place that had been home for so long. Any base is home, moving along with her parents and then herself, always with surety and she clawed her way up to this position, to be a pilot and whenever she's been in a Jaeger it's as easy as breathing. They say she can Drift with anyone, that the joy, bright and unselfconscious, tempered by her willingness to get the job done but to do the right thing allows for an easy connection. Outside of the Drift she's awkward at times, feels too young amongst all these people and misses when the military felt like family but her parents are gone and she's the one left with only Legolas as her other constant. But the Drift with him is strained now because she knows how he feels and she can accept that but he can't and his father certainly can't because there's no such thing as subtlety with pilots. You know things about one another, finish sentences, remember memories that aren't yours, wake up in the night feeling like your body is all wrong before you breathe and repeat a mantra or go looking for your other half and crawl into the one bed, pressed close enough to share a breath and heartbeat the way you just shared neurons.  
  
But Thranduil wants no part in continued fighting when the Jaegers begin to fall and when Smaug disappears apparently for good. Thranduil looks to defences and making homes inland with shelters built so strong she wonders if it's to keep them in more than it's to keep anything out. Thranduil shouts her down – well, he never shouts, it's Thranduil, she doesn't know if anyone remembers when he last raised his voice – and reminds her of her _place_ and she wants to spit in his face. Her place is in a Jaeger. Her place is out there striding through the ocean and moving in a machine that feels like an extension of her own body, phantom sinew and muscle, often in the dark when even her keen eyes through a visor can't always tell where the sky ends and the ocean begins.  
  
Legolas follows her when she leaves or tries to. She can see him running when she throws her bag (her whole life, one bag that contains all that she is and all that she was) and she steels herself, not knowing if he'll come with her or not. She has to make her own choice and she has, she will not stay in a place that cannot see the forest for the trees, that would rather shut itself away and believe that all is well. She refuses to be blind.  
  
"Tauriel," he says and for all that they've drifted together there's a gaping chasm between them where neither knows the words. _Did we really drift apart so easily?_ The thought flits across her mind as he stares at her and once she could read him without trying, just half a glance out the corner of her eye but now either she can't read him or he's forgotten how to speak to her so she pulls him close and half-laughs, half-sobs. "This isn't our fight, there _isn't_ a fight, not anymore Tauriel, he is gone, they're all gone – Scatha, Glaurung, Gostir, the Great Cold Drake, the Beast of Gondolin and countless others, even Ancalagon the Black. All slain. All gone. What was Smaug to them? But a worm Tauriel."  
  
"It's more than that," she whispers fiercely, bittersweet as she smiles and pulls away, blinking back her tears. "This is our fight."  
  
"Where will you go? The Shatterdomes are going, they're just a relic. The Jaegers are taken west now."  
  
"There are still Jaegers."  
  
His eyes go wide as she hops into her jeep, his hand on the door. "You cannot-"  
  
"You can come."  
  
He looks at her and then back to the Shatterdome his father haunts, wanting to be rid of it but unable to leave, the wraith that stalks the halls.  
  
She favours him with one last smile, pushes his hand away and shuts the door. She doesn't look back, she just drives until she comes to the place with the oldest Jaeger that wasn't completely destroyed, one she heard they rebuilt, the guardian of the Shatterdome and its heart. She finds a place for herself amidst these legends where she feels as awkward and gangly as a newborn foal finding its feet and there are many unfriendly eyes, accusations that she's spying for the enemy, as if the enemy is one of their own and not a threat that lies coiled and waiting, growing fat and sly as they sit here and bicker amongst themselves. Her record is spotless – Elin Hathol is known far and wide just like Dúnedain Evenstar and the Eorlingas Charger still are amongst countless others – and Dís is firm but fair, telling her to follow Ori to her room and to change and report for training immediately. It's exactly what she expected and hoped for.  
  
What she does not expect is the young man who looks at her like she is the sun and the moon and the stars when she sweeps him off his feet in their first sparring match, one of his legs in her hand and her forearm against his throat, only a hint of pressure. She does not expect to breathe in sync with him and to blush and look away at the same time as his brother snorts and laughs under his breath. When she stands and pulls him to his feet, one fluid motion, she feels eyes on her again but then the spectre of this Shatterdome is stalking away and she slips off as Fíli steps forward to start teasing his brother.

* * *

  
  
"I will not have one of _them_ here!" Thorin growls instead of any real sort of introduction because he and his sister (and Frerin once too but they were always much more gentle with Frerin) have never stood on ceremony with one another. The sight of one of his nephews with the new arrival already pinning him to the floor burns in his mind and he remembers when no help came from Thranduil's ilk when so much was lost in those early devastating years, how he never forgot, not once, not the years of watching Kaiju Blue and the loss of their great wealth tear his family apart. And now Thranduil advocates walls. What does he know of walls? His own son climbs into a Jaeger and there are whispers that once Thranduil was a pilot but that it left him scarred so greatly that he never set foot in one again. But Elin Hathol is no longer running and all funds are diverted, parts melted down to build these great walls. Thorin remembers Smaug, that great ugly beast and how he lunged with his gaping maw and razor claws and plucked Frerin from between him and his sister. He cannot stand still before the desk dividing him and his sister and he paces back and forth as he waits for her to respond.  
  
"This is my Shatterdome," Dís says and even though Thorin is her older brother, and for years after their parents died it was just them, just the three of them now two, he could live to be a hundred and he wouldn't be able to read her carefully neutral expression, "you are my brother and I love you but you do not make the decisions here."  
  
"She comes from Thranduil! And what do you allow her? To not only have free access to this Shatterdome but to allow her to what? Train with your sons?"  
  
She sighs and pinches her brow, straightening in a way Thorin remembers he used to do. Before. When he was still the Thorin most of the world knew. "It is not your decision Thorin. We are in need of pilots, she is in need of a Jaeger."  
  
"What Jaeger do we have?" He demands, striding forward to slam his hands down on her desk, a few sheets from the tallest stack of papers giving way. She says nothing, gathering the papers with the same calm she used with the lads when they were young and wild and Thorin grinds his teeth, leaning down to try to catch her eye when suspicion and a sick dread uncoil in his belly. "You cannot..." He trails off in horror, backing away from her (he doesn't know because they no longer Drift but it's the same face he made when they first saw Smaug, red and so very terrible, the way that great worm smiled when he sank into the ocean taking Frerin with him.) "That is our Jaeger! Our people, our family! You cannot-"  
  
"Enough Thorin!"  
  
It makes them both jump. Dís has precious little reason to shout – mostly her voice is raised as befits an officer making sure their soldiers know how to toe the line, projecting so she can be heard clearly in every corner of the room or over the roar of the ocean and helicopters, of the wind and Kaiju and the Jaegers. She's controlled. In control. This has a ragged edge and he looks down at where her hands grip her desk hard enough to turn her knuckles white.  
  
"You are my brother and I love you but I am the Marshall," she straightens, seems as tall as a mountain, her spine forged steel, "this is my Shatterdome and I must look to the future for _my sons_." As ever when they're mentioned her voice is low and hard because they're her sons, she brought them into this world for good or ill and they've been the hope of this Shatterdome ever since.  
  
"Dís-"  
  
"No, Thorin. Fíli is loyal to a fault, strong and brave, Kíli is eager and reckless. Tauriel is determined and just."  
  
He bows his head, staggers away from her desk to collapse on the bed she keeps in her office because more often than not she has no choice but to sleep here. "Do not say it," he begs in a gasping breath as he feels hot and cold at once, his heart beating like a hammer, sweat slicking his palms. He jumps when she takes one because he didn't notice her moving; where Fíli has the same deliberate heavy stride he has, he often forgets that Kíli's moments of quiet, stealthy grace come from his mother.  
  
"I would not see them become us," she whispers, old bitterness and grief in her voice.  
  
"You blame me." It's not a question. Not after all this time.  
  
"I blame all of you. I blame me too," she replies, the discussion they have over and over, the thoughts he felt as though they were his own – maybe they were but he's proud in a way Dís is not and it's why she's the Marshall and he's the one who backs her and trains the pilots until they could fight in their sleep. "They're all I have Thorin."  
  
He doesn't say they're all he has too but there's a flicker of disgust when she meets his eyes and he knows that she knows. They had a bond once, strong and deep and through Frerin it made them the best. Without him they're stone on stone, scraping each other raw and ragged and it's just one more reason to loathe Smaug with all his being. He says nothing when he leaves, intent on returning to the training rooms but he finds himself before the Lonely Mountain and climbs up the steps even though his knees aren't what they used to be, up and up to the Mountain's heart where he kneels, weeping, in the space that was once Frerin's.  
  
"I'm sorry," he says over and over and hopes the dead and sentinels know better than he does.

* * *

  
  
Kíli leaps up and over the stick when Fíli sweeps out in one sure arc, his younger brother bringing his stick up to Fíli's throat but he swings his weight over to his back foot, pivots, brings his stick up to where Kíli's should be. Except Kíli's stick is not there, it's a whole second too late and he ends up on the floor, flat on his back with a thump and Fíli sighs and stays where he is, kneeling with his 'blade' at Kíli's throat.  
  
"You going to bloody ask her one of these days?" He asks, daring Kíli to come up with his usual artless dodging of the Tauriel question that normally takes the form of Kíli being a little shit and pouncing or changing the subject.  
  
"Shut up," his younger brother mutters, ears going pink. Kíli's got rather big ears so it's very unfortunate that his blushes spread there but mentioning it would give him a chance to change the subject yet again so Fíli is the bigger person and gets to his feet, pulling his brother up with him.  
  
"I will if you will! Do you have any idea what it's like to be stuck in your head when we're running simulators? 'Oh Tauriel, ravish me with your star blade!'" It's not exactly what Kíli thinks but it's honestly close enough that with the falsetto voice Fíli uses that he thinks he's made his point.  
  
"I don't think that!" Kíli retorts hotly, swatting at Fíli with his stick, not hard but enough that he feels it so Fíli uses his to haul his brother close and to anyone else it'd just be two brothers and co-pilots having a laugh together as they head to the changing rooms and showers but Fíli's smile is really just gritted teeth. Until Kíli mutters, "she doesn't have a star blade," and then he's suddenly choking with laughter. Kíli mutters again, something that sounds an awful lot like Fíli's name and the phrase you're such an utter _tit_ before he's heading off.  
  
"Kíli!" He shouts after him, trying not to laugh because yeah they're brothers and only Fíli is allowed to take the piss or upset or hurt Kíli or else Fíli'll come and break a nose but Kíli's a bit more sensitive, especially about his first proper love. (Fíli knows because they're brothers and even without the practice Drift he knows that Kíli has never been so enraptured by a single person before and she might as well be a star for the way she dazzles his little brother.) "C'mon Kíli, I was only having a laugh, I'm sorry!"  
  
In the end he has to offer Kíli his dessert at dinner (an age old tactic but Kíli always shares whatever bread he manages to grab because he's quicker and faster than anyone else in the Shatterdome) before his brother comes out of his sulk and they're laughing again, teasing Ori at the table. Then Tauriel walks past and Fíli watches, really watches, when she looks over at Kíli and smiles, his brother smiling back at her, open and warm without any of the silliness or impending smirks that are as much Kíli as his messy hair and big ears; her smile is equal parts surprised and delighted, her cheeks flushing before she hurries away. He hides his own grin in his glass, shaking his head but Kíli's too busy smiling at his own plate to notice. He wonders, later, when they're in their shared room, him on the top bunk and Kíli in the bottom, if it's like when mother says she met their father, that she just knew somewhere deeper than her heart and her bones that there was a connection there. He never really believed that then, not with someone outside your family, not when old Óin says that he and his brother might have the strongest connection he's seen after their mother carrying each of them in the earliest stages in Drifts with her brothers, when their whole family has the Jaeger Program in their blood but now he wonders. They always used to joke about some of the other pilots – the silly plume on the Eorlingas Charger, how the Dúnedain Evenstar's pilots are the most sickeningly in love couple with the record for the longest drift, those daft twins that called theirs the Grey Company or just how stoned the curly haired cousins were when they named theirs Second Breakfast and above all else just how ridiculous a name Elin Hathol was – but Fíli knows that Tauriel goes up to the roof at night and Kíli's always had that wistful streak in him.  
  
"She likes stars," he says aloud and there's a rustle beneath him before Kíli leans out the bed enough for Fíli to peer down at him.  
  
"What?"  
  
"She likes stars you idiot, she goes up to the roof to go look at stars."  
  
"Like I did before Thorin-"  
  
"Exactly."  
  
He manages not to laugh as Kíli starts scrambling about in the dark, banging his foot on the bed frame before tripping over the threshold and out into the dome but once he's alone, he realises he's just smiling. Kíli deserves that sort of happiness and he knows there's only one Jaeger for them to pilot, rebuilt not for two like so many suggested but for three, someone who waited this long for them to be ready and Fíli's the lead pilot here, he's going to make sure they're all ready. He belongs with his brother and he belongs with starlight and grace and maybe this Lonely Mountain will get the better of that beast at last.

* * *

  
  
As long as he can remember, he's always felt like the odd one in the family. He's as Durin as the rest of them but he's not his brother or his uncle who both seem like these immovable objects, who stride like Jaegers do, sure in who and what they are, their place in the world. He's not his mother either, not her velvet over steel leadership or her composure in the face of the world falling apart around them. He'd wager he's not his father because he sees him through Fíli's blurry memories and all he can see is an older version of the man his brother has grown into. He has an inkling but the way it works in this family has always been that your honour the dead but leave old ghosts be and asking about father hurts his mother enough and asking about grandfather and great-grandfather drains all colour and life from Thorin so he can't imagine asking about Frerin. Only he watches the clips and reads over the reports that mention him and thinks _I wish I knew you_ because maybe that was the person he was meant to fit with in this family. All he knows is that the time Thorin finally caught him on the roof in the small hours, the lights of the city behind them and the empty ocean ahead with the whole world beyond it that he called out Frerin at first.  
  
He doesn't like remembering what came after. Thorin shouting was and is always bad enough but it was the first time he'd seen Thorin cry and he'd shared his bed with his brother, whispering about it and he's never gone back up to the roof at night since.  
  
But he remembers the route, avoiding the lift and taking the stairs because the two people likely to still be up and ask him what the hell he thinks he's doing up at this hour, like he's still five and not a grown man with a beard (right, fine, it's stubble but it counts) on his face, don't use stairs anymore because they're old farts and their knees protest. Not that he'd say that to Thorin because even as a nephew he's only allowed so much room and Dwalin would laugh and then ask Kíli to give him a hand in demonstrating to the rest of the room and Kíli would regret it for days afterwards. Fit as he is, he's still out of breath when he gets to the top and pushes open the door, rusty hinges screaming in protest.  
  
"Well there goes stealth," he mutters under his breath, rubbing his hands together as the wind whips his hair into his face. He's missed coming up here even if he'd forgotten just how cold it gets with the wind rolling in from the sea as he makes his way across the roof to the lone figure, silhouette just visible and no more in the light of the moon. She either didn't hear the door – not bloody likely – or she might as well not be here and he falters, remembering that he came up here for peace and quiet and maybe she did too. It's not as if he's never spoken to her because he has, he went running after her the first time they were training and she kicked his arse and he can't get the look in her eyes out of his head. Yes, she had him on the floor but that's the part that gets him. Since he started training only his brother, Thorin or Dwalin best him. Then she swept in, smiling with her eyes downcast and suddenly sprang into life and that's not what people mean when they say 'oh so and so swept me off my feet' but he's pretty sure that _that's_ the kind of sweeping he's wanted to be a part of. Maybe the problem before was that he always pictured himself doing the sweeping and didn't realise just how much he wanted it to be the other way round. "Hi," he says at last when he's finally standing next to her and she turns quickly, jumping back from where she'd been leaning against the ledge as if guilty.  
  
They say sorry at the same time, Tauriel laughing and him snorting.  
  
"No, I'm sorry, I heard you come up here a lot and I used to as well but it was to be alone and if you want-"  
  
"No, I'd be glad of the company." She smiles, a hint of shyness that doesn't seem like it belongs on her face, not when she's an actual Jaeger pilot with kills beneath her belt. "It's been a long time since anywhere felt like home."  
  
"I used to come up here when it was too loud down there," he tells her, fumbling in his pocket for the stone his mother gave him as a child, a very ancient tradition they've somehow kept alive and he tosses it up in the air as he speaks, "y'know, I love them all but sometimes you just want some peace?" She nods and he tosses the stone too high and grabs in a panic but she catches it with ease, taking his and pressing it into the palm of his hand, her fingers covering his. "Maybe Thorin was worried I'd fall over the ledge."  
  
"Your uncle has many reasons to be...concerned."  
  
"I've never heard it put like that," he snorts because diplomacy and Thorin don't really go well together, especially not since the very public spats he's had with Thranduil only got worse. Maybe it'd be for the best for him to change the subject because it's the first time he's been here since the time Thorin called him by his dead brother's name and wept as he shouted.  
  
"Pilots used to move around a lot more back in the old days, didn't they?"  
  
"The Lonely Mountain did not."  
  
"Well she was more ours you know? My family poured all they had into her and it was worth it."  
  
"The same was said of Elin Hathol." It sounds holy the way she says it, looking out over the ocean and his breath catches in his throat long enough taking in the sight of her bathed in moonlight that she looks back at him, one eyebrow raised.  
  
He clears his throat and hopes it's dark enough that she can't see him blushing. "Why did you leave? Most of the Jaegers aren't doing much of anything anymore, they just take them away to, oh what's it called again?"  
  
"The Grey Havens."  
  
"Thanks, the Grey Havens for the scrapped ones and then sometimes they're repaired and we keep them. Each dome has at least one kicking around don't they?"  
  
"Elin Hathol remains where she was created," Tauriel confirms, looking down at her hands and before he can think and try to talk himself out of it he reaches for her other hand and squeezes gently.  
  
"Was it hard? To leave her?"  
  
"It felt like cutting off a limb," she whispers, her words almost lost as the waves crash against the lower levels of the base.  
  
"Then why did you leave?"  
  
When she smiles he knows she's thinking of how young he is but for once it doesn't feel like the slight it does whenever Thorin says he knows nothing of the world, it's almost like wonderment, that he'd ask her something like that.  
  
"I could not sit idly when the danger is still out there. You still train here, you're ready, where I came from we sit and sit and we huddle closer and there is safety in closed ranks but-"  
  
"But it makes an easier target and once you've wiped them out then that's it," he finishes quietly and she nods. "I think we always feel safe here with the mountain around, she's always been here so everyone thinks she always will, even after what happened."  
  
"I couldn't believe it when I came here and saw her. She has her scars but...I don't know how to explain it."  
  
"No, I know what you mean." And he does even though he's only been inside a simulator because the Lonely Mountain was built for three and it's only been him and his brother.  "Mum always said that they were faults when we were too young to really know what was going on because it took a long time to rebuild her and they didn't want to make it seem like nothing had happened. So she has all her old scars, all her memories, so she doesn't forget and so we don't but she's still there. No matter what. I think that's why they called her the Mountain."  
  
"We," Tauriel pauses, wetting her lip before continuing, "we would say awful things about her. How she was old and slow, a big lumbering giant, something out of the dark ages."  
  
Tauriel looks so guilty and nervous that Kíli laughs to set her at ease. "We say that about her too, we never really saw it as a bad thing and well, we all made fun of all the Jaegers. I think it's what everyone does – it's like siblings. Only we get to make fun of them, it's why the wall thing hit Thorin so hard."  
  
"Did you make fun of my Jaeger?"  
  
His grin is impish and he nods, turning so he can lean casually against the ledge with both elbows, Tauriel planting her hands on her hips as she pretends (he doesn't know how he knows, how he can read her expressions in the dark already, all he can think of is how she moved in a blur and how his heart stopped when she bested him) to be offended.  
  
"And what did you say of my Jaeger?"  
  
"Oh the usual – the same thing they say about the Grey Company; mostly it's about the design and how they're too lean and narrow and spindly, sacrificing power for beauty. Oh and the name."  
  
"I named her."  
  
"Not that there's anything wrong with it," Kíli says quickly even though he wants to kick himself because this is him, always rushing in, never thinking. They fall silent, just the wind and the waves, an undercurrent of city noise beneath it all. "Why d'you name her that?"  
  
"The blade part wasn't my idea – Legolas wanted arrow but she had no arrows but she did have her blades, I think she was the first to have them, they added them to the Evenstar later when they saw how successful they could be with the right pilots."  
  
"Didn't they name that sword?"  
  
"Andúril," Tauriel confirms and they share a look of 'yes, ridiculous I know' and some of his anxiety about his stupid remark eases. "I picked Elin – we all shared a love of light but I love the stars more than anything else. I grew up moving with my family and the only constant I had sometimes were the stars, whenever I felt alone I could find a quiet spot and just sit and not be alone." Her words trail off as she looks up, sighing. "They're so old, so ageless. They've seen everything. They know this world and us, saw us step forward trembling – when I first stepped out in a Jaeger she had no name but there was nothing when we went to engage the Kaiju, only the ocean. The stars." She's smiling now, bright and pure as them and he pushes away from the ledge to stare at her in open awe; there are people who say the Kaiju they're fighting are angels sent from the ocean and he's never believed any of that but looking at her...  
  
"Once," he says when he realises all he's been doing is staring at her, "I went out in the helicopters, I was going with Thorin to another base, he was off to pick something up and I just wanted a ride in a helicopter and mum probably wanted me out of her hair for a bit. Anyway, it was night and a full moon when we were coming back, late in the year, autumn then I saw this moon. It was glowing, not just glowing, it was like it was on fire, huge and red and orange." She smiles as he talks and somehow they share a look and as one they sink down to sit with the ledge at their backs to keep the wind off them, heads tipped back and her arm ends up around his shoulders as he leans against her. "It's got different names wherever you go but I was young, I called it a fire moon."  
  
They're both still smiling when she cups his chin and leans down to kiss him as though it's the most natural thing in the world with only the stars as witnesses.

* * *

  
  
Finally the day comes when Smaug wakes and the Lonely Mountain lives again. Fíli flanked by Kíli and Tauriel and the Drift isn't blue, it's white as the stars and red like fire and gold like the moon and glowing bright enough to blind them. It's _Kíli running around holding onto his hand with his own sticky one_ and _Fíli stop making fun of your brother's beard it won't make it grow any faster_ and _this is our fight and why can't you see that, there is more to the world than this_. It's Kíli and Tauriel on the roof, stolen kisses and starlight and every time Fíli and his brother have pulled a prank and the Mountain surrounding them, her heart beating the same tempo as theirs.  
  
Smaug rises from the Breach, the water roiling and hissing with steam and three bodies and minds move together as one to slay him once and for all.

**Author's Note:**

> So this was never meant to be as long as this and it's the laziest fusion where I kept as many names as I could aka the dragons are all Kaiju but they look far more like Kaiju. The dwarves and the Noldorin would have been the first Jaeger builders and it was through losing their assets that Thror succumbed to something like dragon sickness etc. Timelines have been hugely compressed because everyone is human in this AU because I am lazy.
> 
> Other Jaegers mentioned:  
> Grey Company - piloted by Elladan and Elrohir  
> Dunedain Evenstar - piloted by Arwen and Aragorn  
> Elin Hathol (Star Blade in Sindarin) piloted by Tauriel and Legolas  
> Eorlingas Charger - piloted by Theodred and Eomer (formerly), now piloted by Eomer and Eowyn  
> Second Breakfast - piloted by Merry and Pippin


End file.
